Gothic 3 Random chests/items: a shame

I'm playing a mage character and desperately trying to find some nice staff, one of the very cool new weapon types.

After some searching on several forums I found out that in the "magic" chests (a certain type of chest that doesn't have a name above it and requires a lockpick to open) you can find all kinds of staffs. But... you'll need to open 38 of them before finding the first one. After that in every magic chest (in chest 38-50) you open there's a certain type of magic staff.
To put it in perspective, there are only 50 of these magic chests scattered all over the world of Gothic 3 (all three continents; Myrtana, Varant and Nordmar).

I'm now level 44 and haven't been to half of them, in the meantime I can only get a mana staff (+25 mana) and a staff of defense (+15 armor against non-magic damage), which can already be bought in the area around Ardea, Cap Dun, Reddock.

So I decided to cheat around a little and used the mastercheat "idfka" to give me all the weapons and items available. I was stunned. The game contains a lot of great weapons, which I've never seen. Tons of swords, staffs, axes and only because the merchants inventory is random you'll never see 30% of them.
For the magic staffs there are several staffs that resemble a certain level, similar to armor (light, medium, heavy). There's a light firemage staff, medium, heavy (not the correct names, just meant to give you an idea). Same goes for dark mage and water mage.
The two staffs mentioned above also have stronger brothers. The second mana staff offers +50 mana, the third offers mana regeneration. By the time you'll find it you've probably learned that skill already.

I think it's a shame that so many weapons can only be found very late in the game or not at all. Why don't the firemages for example sell those fire staffs? The water mages those water staffs, etc.

Is there a magic chest list? Split the difference so to speak.

Sem actually the best way to get a very good (second best) is in Cape Dun.
Since items are random I don't feel guilty saving before I speak to a Merchant and reloading as necessary, since technicalllyyou could get 80% (approximatly) of items at any time.

Playing version 1.12 the Hassishin offered me a Double Bladed staff first time I checked his inventory, woot was that lucky.
Also the Merc Merchant, the one that wants 3 healing postions offers good Staves (randomly of course).

First time I played I didn't turn in the Slave to the Hassishian but came to realise I should have, since I intend to free the land this was a temporary measure allowing me to get into the confidence of the Hassishian's, the guy/slave isn't suffering as he just sits all day outside the tent.

This is one of the major problems of the game and iirc PB has even stated as much only doing it due to limited time frame they had, so in all reguards the good Staves like the Fire Swords should be there and avialable in the first 2 towns.

So don't put yourself out of a good feeling about the game worst case just give yourself the Staff and give the gold to a Merchant, plus this means you will be able to sell most stuff to that merchant since he now has extra gold.

The most important thing is to enjoy the game and have fun, so if you want a staff and it should be available, I say go for it and the Staves are great fun.

I dit. I now have the "light Firemage staff" and as I progress I will give myself the better staffs. It's just a shame that such a workaround is needed to get the good stuff.

Indeed, looting really could be better. There is no point in running around trying to get new weapons - you can forge the best ones you'll ever find anyway. As for using a staff? I rarely do, the ones you find are usually of fairly low quality, and don't really add anything to a mage other than cool looks and the ability to block spells.

The real bugger is that the four mages staffs (all having mana regen and another perk) are found in magic chest 47-50.
And you know what...
There are only 45 magic chests in the whole game!!

Are you serious?
You mean the special ones with no name on them?
That's a shocker someone has found them all or at least how many are in the game?
I saw one version of a map from WoG where they seem to be listing chest, but in the newer version of her map she left the chest out.

sorry sem but i found "everything" special including all staffs (check my staffology post) in my second playthrough the game. so someone has there numbers of facts wrong (don't worry though it may be as far off as a year from now but when i do playthrough i will attempt an accurate list of not only how many but a map of there locations. and for the record the only time i've ever used 'marvin' was that damn water mage key or whatever it was in night of the raven.

You didn't find them all, the strongest staffs are missing in your list
(for other readers, the list is here:http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=722&highlight=magic+staffs)

These are missing:
- Staff of the Water Mage: 40 damage, +50 mana, +40 protection against ice, Water Mage perk
- Staff of the Fire Mage: 40 damage, +50 mana, +40 protection against fire, Fire Mage perk
- Staff of Dominance: 60 damage, Mana Regeneration and Firemage perk
- Staff of Balance: 60 damage, Mana Regeneration and Watermage perk
- Staff of Death (not sure about the name): 60 damage, Mana Regeneration and Darkmage perk
- Staff of Invincibility: 45 damage, +40 protection to blades/missiles/impact/fire

These are the six strongest staffs and can (as far as I know) only found in magic chest (without a name), but there are only 45 magic chests in the game and these will appear in this kind of chest after #45.

And that was my point, there is only a very tiny small chance a merchant has one of these items and they can't be found in chest. So if you want (and they really look good on your mage btw) there hardly anything you can do besides cheating.

Perhaps there will be more of these unnamed chests in the addon.....

my bad. i'm still not following how some people say that merchants sell these magic items as in the hundreds of hours i played i never found any of the higher powered items available for purchase. maybe bjon045 is right in that they were intentionally left out of the game for the addon. remember just because there is stuff in the data files of the game doesn't mean that it is supposed to be in the final version. can anyone who hasn't cheated/consoled confirm that they've recieved those staffs?

I started finding all kinds of high end equipment from chests towards the end of my last game. No staves though. Inquisitor sword, rune shield, Rune Sword recipe, Nimrod bow, Rhino killer crossbow, etc. All as I started going out of my way to find chests. It's a very strange system. If I were to make a random loot system I'd rather not use the number of chests opened as a variable, but maybe sort the items into groups that are tied to chest locations instead, so that I would find Barbarian items around Nordmar and Desert items in Varant... I wonder what inspired Piranha. As things stand the best weapons one will use throughout the game are one of:

self forged bastard sword, self forged ore twohander, krush tarach, and flame sword.

I'm still fairly convinced that the flame sword shouldnt be in stores at all (it should likely together with the demon sword not be tradable at all). I'll check if my suspicion that the flaming sword only is the one available as a spell is correct when I have the time...

I have been toying with an idea, I wonder if it would be possible to chage the count of chest opened in your savegame or heck change the variable while ingame.
The question is though what would happen if say at chest 5 you found the correct memory addy then change it to say 45, whats gonna be coming out at 70 and 80 count chests?
Staff, Sword, Shield and Armor of the Gods?
It maybe worth doing just to see what happens certainly would give a better idea if PB really is using number of chests opened instead of PC level.